Adobe Drops Licensing Fees, Gives Away Flash For Devices By Michael Calore Software maker Adobe announced Thursday that it would drop many of the licensing requirements attached to its Flash technology, which is used to display video and audio content on the web. The new initiative, named the Open Screen Project <http://www.adobe.com/go/openscreenproject>, has five key components:
1. Adobe will remove license restrictions on SWF and FLV file formats. Outsiders can now build their own Flash player clones. 2. Adobe will also remove the licensing fees on its Flash player. Developers can now integrate Adobe's player into any device or application without paying a fee. 3. Porting layer APIs will be opened up. They've always been device-specific, so manufacturers have had to sign agreements with Adobe in order to include the Flash player on a particular device. By eliminating that requirement, Adobe is allowing anyone to put the Flash player on their device without even opening a dialog with the company. 4. Adobe will publish the protocols for Flash, so companies can build the content delivery systems for themselves. They no longer need to use Adobe's Flash server software. 5. Adobe will allow over-the-air updates of the Flash player. Providers and carriers can push out new player versions to their users. In a sense, this is what Adobe did with PostScript and the Portable Document Format (PDF) -- give away the file formats and allow others to implement them free of licensing fees, but continue to charge for the development tools. Thursday's announcement is also in line with Adobe's recent moves towards open-source technologies<http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2008/02/adobes-kevin-ly.html>. In February, the company released its Flex developer's kit under an open-source license, and in 2006, it donated the code for Flash's Tamarin<http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2006/11/adobe_releases_.html>virtual machine to the open-source Mozilla project. In a telephone interview, Adobe vice president of platforms David Wadhwani told Wired.com that his company is opening up the Flash ecosystem in order to win a wider install base for the presentation technology on devices. Adobe is also hoping its initiative will help speed adoption of the Adobe Integrated Runtime, or AIR, the company's Flash-based technology which lets developers run their web applications natively on desktop computers and, as it evolves, mobile phones. "We feel that Flash and AIR are the right metaphors for having unified runtimes across all devices," he says. The Flash player, which is installed on about 95% of the world's computers, is available as a free download, so content providers almost always default to the Flash format for presenting video and other rich media to desktop users. On mobile devices, it's a different story. The mobile version of the Flash player currently ships on about 500 million handheld devices, but there are over 3 billion mobile phones in the world. Granted, not all of those devices are capable of displaying video, but Flash penetration is still far less on mobile devices than it is on desktops. According to Wadhwani, Adobe's goal is to see Flash installed on one billion phones by the end of 2008 2009, a number which he estimates will represent about 40% of video-capable mobile devices. Several big-name content providers, including MTV, NBC and the BBC, are backing Adobe's plan to open up -- Flash on more devices means more people watching their TV shows, an obvious win. When asked about whether this initiative will speed up the development of a Flash-capable browser on the iPhone, Wadhwani reiterated what Adobe has previously stated<http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/03/adobe-flash-is.html>-- that the company would love to see the Flash experience on the iPhone, but that it would require making some concessions about the way content is presented to stay within the restrictions of Apple's software developer's kit for the device. However, Wadhwani speculated that the Open Screen Project will give a boost to eager developers who want to build their own Flash player for the iPhone. *Update (May 1, 10:45AM PDT)*: Rather than leave the issue open to speculation, I asked Wadhwani to clarify Adobe's position on Flash for the iPhone. Here's what he says: "The iPhone is a type of high-end device, a smartphone, which would benefit from a consistent runtime environment that delivers a complete rich browsing experience. And we are now focusing on optimizing Flash Player for the smartphone segment of the market, which includes working to bring Flash to the iPhone." Another potential beneficiary of the Open Screen Project is Linux. A great number of mobile devices are running Linux, and developers working on mobile video applications for the free operating system can now build for whatever device they'd like without the need to pursue licensing agreements or worry about device-specific players. Also see: http://www.adobe.com/openscreenproject/ -- Prabin Gautam "ओपन ठिटो" Registered Linux User #443940 letS makE ouR streeT FOSSible.......... --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ FOSS Nepal mailing list: [email protected] http://groups.google.com/group/foss-nepal To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Community website: http://www.fossnepal.org/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
